ESPN and the Southeastern Conference have agreed to the longest-running contract in the network's history to gain rights to the SEC's football and men's and women's basketball games.
The deal starts during the 2009-10 season and will run through the 2023-24 season and is reportedly worth a ridiculous $2.25 billion. The contract effectively ends any chance of the SEC having its own network, something that had been talked about in the last few months.
CBS will still broadcast games that they are already contracted for, but the affiliation with Raycom sports has ended.
"We're thrilled at the historic nature of this deal," ESPN executive vice president for content John Skipper said. "We've had college sports as part of our DNA for 29 years. It's not hard to think we'd want to be in with the quality of the Southeastern Conference's sports."
While SEC commissioner Mike Slive said he had highly considered adding an SEC network, once he started to get together and work out the details he realized it was not as easy as he thought.
"I can remember when the Big-10 (Conference) announced their channel, and we had also been talking about it at that point," Slive said. "We thought a lot about it. One of the things I thought about really early is every conference is different. When we began to look at things like finances, distribution, academics, national exposure, all those kinds of objectives. Then when we got down to the nitty-gritty looking at all the different elements…(ESPN) had vision and creativity. Slowly but surely it started to happen."
ESPN executives anticipate this deal will bring more coverage than the conference has ever seen before.
"The bottom line here is that fans of SEC football will have more access to more games and better distribution than they've ever had in the past," said ESPN senior vice president for college sports programming Burke Magnus said.
Officials would not release how much each team is expected to benefit financially, but the figures are expected to be significant.
"We anticipate that these agreements will provide financial security for our members for a very long time to come," Slive said.
